Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford says the game industry once expected a genre experiment like Borderlands to "die," but it actually became "one of the leading video game franchises in the world": "It's kind of humbling"

Borderlands 4 is one of the biggest upcoming new games for 2025, but a decade-and-a-half ago the series was getting underway in pretty humble circumstances. Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford says that the industry at large expected the original Borderlands to come and go, and the success of the series since then has been downright "humbling."

"If you look at the Borderlands games over time, you see that we are pushing, and we are always exploring the boundaries," Pitchford tells GamesRadar+ at Gamescom. "But, we are doing it within a framework that is very natural to what Borderlands is. And I think that’s one of the reasons why we're on our fourth Borderlands game, and it’s one of the most successful franchises of all time."

Before Borderlands launched in 2009, Gearbox was mostly known for its WW2 shooter series Brothers in Arms, a Half-Life expansion, and a handful of PC ports through the early '00s. Would a studio like that really be able to make a hybrid of FPS games and loot-driven RPGs work? These days, RPG mechanics are a given in almost every genre, but back then it seemed like a pretty wild experiment, and Pitchford says there were a lot of skeptics around Borderlands.

"We went from an industry that predicted that we would die – that Borderlands would find no audience – to being one of the leading video game franchises in the world. And it's kind of humbling, frankly, to be a part of it," Pitchford says.

But with Borderlands 4 out in a matter of weeks, Pitchford says he's not too concerned with how the reception to the series has evolved over the past 16 years. "I don't really worry about that too much. We just focus on committing to the bit, and see where our designs lead us."

The Gamescom 2025 schedule rolls on, but don't miss everything announced at the Future Games Show 2025.